August 2012

Chinese
dissident Wang Xiaoning was released today after serving a 10-year prison term
on charges of "incitement to subvert state power," a case built in good part on
client information supplied by Yahoo. Wang had used his Yahoo email account and
the discussion forum Yahoo Groups to spread ideas the government deemed
dangerous. His case closely parallels that of journalist Shi Tao, another Yahoo
user who fell afoul of the Chinese government. In 2005, Shi was convicted of "illegally
leaking state secrets abroad" and given a 10-year sentence. Yahoo had helped
authorities identify Shi through his account information.

We
talk a lot about hacking attacks against individual journalists here, but what typifies
an attempt to access a reporter's computer? Joel Simon, CPJ's executive
director, received an email last week that reflects some characteristics of a
malware attack against a journalist or activist. There was nothing particularly
notable about the targeting. (Like many reporters, CPJ receives such attempts
occasionally). The attack failed at the first fence, and my casual
investigation into the source was inconclusive. There are no shocking answers
or big headlines to draw from this attack. But it does illustrate a
contemporary reality: Opportunistic assailants regularly shower journalists with
software attacks.

Online penetration in Venezuela has increased in
recent years, with 40 percent of its population online, according to the
International Telecommunication Union. A significant amount of activity takes
place on Twitter, where Venezuela has the highest penetration in the region
after Uruguay, according to local research company Tendencias Digitales. President Hugo Chávez Frías, who has more than three million
followers on Twitter, uses the platform regularly to convey official news--as he
did on Tuesday when a raging fire at an oil refinery was extinguished, leaving 48
people dead, according to a report on EFE.

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Early this month, newspaper offices in Indian-controlled
Kashmir received a note warning journalists to be more supportive of the
Kashmir independence movement, according to the leading national daily, The Times of India, citing
a news agency in the state's summer capital, Srinagar. No militants took
responsibility this time, but in mid-March insurgent groups issued a joint message
that urged journalists to "highlight the pain and suffering of Kashmiris
because of oppressive state policies."

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Here's a quick pointer to a piece in the Daily Beast by freelance reporter Olesia
Plokhii, who worked at The Cambodia Daily
in Phnom Penh until May this year. Plokhii's moving story, "Death
of a Forester," describes the death of Chut Wutty, a Cambodian activist who
was shot a few feet away from Plokhii and another journalist, Phorn Bopha, while
he accompanied them to an illegal logging site in a protected forest in Koh
Kong province.

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Shortly after the May 7 presidential inauguration of
Vladimir Putin, the Russian parliament passed four major bills in record time--all
of them meant to counter the protests that first erupted in the country in
December 2011.

Indian
Internet advocates and journalists are in an uproar this week over the news
that the government has blocked access to around 300 websites, pages, and
social media accounts in an effort to quell communal violence in the turbulent
northeast. The rationale is that inflammatory online content has fanned
tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims in states including Assam, Karnataka,
Tamil Nadu, and Maharashtra, contributing to a mass exodus from the region and
violence in other cities. The offending content included fabricated images of
violence against Muslims, apparently circulated to incite retaliatory attacks,
according to news reports.

With up to 15,000 journalists expected in Tampa, Fla., for next week's Republican National Convention, some reporters and photographers will undoubtedly encounter problems concerning access to news events and coverage of related protests. Several journalism organizations have compiled resource materials and tips for journalists headed
to the GOP gathering, which starts August 27, and the Democratic convention that
begins September 3. Here are some of those resources:

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Ansar
Abbasi, editor of investigations for Pakistan's leading media group Jang, is apparently
facing a de facto ban from his own employers. Other TV channels also report being
told not to air his views. Abbasi has charged cable operators with spreading
immoral, anti-Islamic messages through Indian movies and other popular culture
broadcasts. In response, he says, they are censoring his views.

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Ethiopians awakened this morning to state
media reports that Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi, 57, the country's leader for 21 years, had died late
Monday in an overseas hospital of an undisclosed disease. Within seconds, Ethiopians
spread the news on social
media;
within minutes, international news media were issuing bulletins. Finally, after
weeks of government silence and obfuscation over Meles' health, there was
clarity for Ethiopians anxious for word about their leader. Still, it was left
to unnamed sources to fill in even the basic details. Meles died in a Brussels
hospital of liver cancer, these sources told international news organizations,
and he had been ill for many months.

"Death of yet another African leader highlights secrecy & lack of transparency when it comes to ailing leaders," CNN's Faith Karimi noted on Twitter, where the hashtag #MelesZenawi was trending globally.

My colleagues and I were saddened to learn of the death of Mika
Yamamoto, a Japan Press video and photo journalist who was killed while covering
clashes in Aleppo, Syria, on Monday. The moment was all the more poignant
because of the similarities with two other Japanese journalist fatalities: Kenji Nagai of APF News in
Burma in 2007 and Hiro
Muramoto of Reuters in Thailand in 2010. As with Yamamoto,
Nagai and Muramoto were photojournalists covering conflict between anti-government
elements and government troops in foreign countries.

A recent wave of
personnel changes at Spanish state-owned broadcaster Radio Televisión Española
(RTVE) has raised concerns about political and ideological influence, with many
fearing that journalists closer to the current conservative government are being
promoted at the expense of those with alleged progressive views. It is the
latest controversy in a long debate about the model for Spain's flagship public
broadcaster and, especially, its relations with the government of the hour.

It's not often we at CPJ find ourselves calling on other
countries to release
Chinese journalists from detention. But that's just what happened yesterday.
Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV contacted us to say that two of their journalists
were among a group of 14 arrested by Japanese authorities over a disputed
territory in the East China Sea. For once, we found ourselves in accordance
with Chinese authorities, who called for the "unconditional and immediate
release" of all 14, according to Reuters.

Using guns, grenades, explosives, and other deadly means, criminals
have assaulted
four Mexican newsrooms in less than six weeks. One of the country's top
journalists, Lydia Cacho, was the target of a chilling
death threat last month. Journalists in Veracruz have gone missing
or been killed
this year. Press fatalities
in Mexico remain among the highest in the world, leading to vast
self-censorship. And the perpetrators? They are not only well organized and heavily
armed, they enjoy
near-complete impunity for their attacks on the press. Mexican lawmakers
began to address the crisis this year, but now they risk losing the momentum.

The Quito government's decision to grant Julian Assange
political asylum comes at a time when freedom of expression is under siege in Ecuador.
President Rafael Correa's press freedom record is among the very worst in the
Americas, and providing asylum to the WikiLeaks founder won't change the
repressive conditions facing Ecuadoran journalists who want to report
critically about government policies and practices.

A day before U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton visited South Sudan this month, McClatchy correspondent Alan Boswell reported
that President Salva Kiir had finally acknowledged his government's support for
a Nuba Mountains-based group that had been skirmishing with Sudanese forces. In
a letter to his U.S. counterpart, the story said, Kiir apologized for his previous
denials, which came in the face of U.S. intelligence to the contrary. The
story, which exposed an important element in the tense relations between the
two once-joined nations, put Boswell in the cross-hairs.

Trickling back from
the summer recess, European press freedom advocates and media lawyers are
taking stock of facts and statements that went underreported during the holiday
lull. And libel reform stands on top of the pile.

The
17-year-old videographer Anas
al-Tarsha regularly filmed clashes and military movements in the city of
Homs in Syria, and posted the footage on YouTube. On February 24, he was killed by
a mortar round while filming the bombardment of the city's Qarabees district,
according to news reports. The central city had been under attack for more than
three weeks as Syrian forces stepped up their assault on opposition
strongholds.

We cover all kinds of censorship here at CPJ. Recently we documented
the cunning application of scissors to prevent readers from accessing
China-related articles in hard copy magazines. But it's been a while since
we've had chance to write about one favored implement of information control in
China: the umbrella.

As a follow-up to my previous "What
to know about covering the conventions," the National Press Photographers
Association (NPPA) has been working with a number of organizations in order to
provide support for journalists covering the U.S. national political
conventions in Tampa, Fla., and Charlotte, N.C., this month and next. Some
things for those journalists to keep in mind:

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"Elections will not be fought, but will be bought,"
is a saying being used by political tacticians in Pakistan. Hope for the legitimacy
of the country's first fair transfer of power between two civilian governments with
the oversight of unbiased media is disappearing quickly. Billions of rupees are
pouring into media outlets through secret sources, journalists and media watch
organizations say. The cash is being paid out in several different ways.

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For more than five months, the Ramallah-based private
television broadcaster Wattan TV has been
without key equipment, including transmitters, computers, files, and archives.
On February 29, Israeli soldiers and officials from the Ministry of
Communications raided
the station without a warrant, saying it was broadcasting illegally and
interfering with aircraft transmissions.

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You would think that with fighting between government
forces and secessionist Tamils finished in May 2009, the Sri Lankan government might
ease its grip on public information--information which is really the property
of the country's citizens, not whichever administration happens to be holding
political power. In 2004, former President Chandrika Bandaranaike's cabinet did
approve a Freedom of Information Bill, but parliament was dissolved and the
bill never went further.

The Syrian civil war is also a propaganda war. With the
Assad regime and the rebels both attempting to assure their supporters and the
world that they are on the brink of victory, how the facts are reported has
become central to the struggle. Hackers working in support of Assad loyalists
this week decided to take a shortcut, attacking the Reuters news agency's blogging
platform and one of its Twitter
accounts, and planting
false stories about the vanquishing of rebel leaders and wavering support
for them from abroad.

Pakistan's media, particularly broadcast, are often praised
and condemned, sometimes in the same sentence. The number of television
broadcasters exploded under the Musharraf government, growing to around 90 private cable and satellite
channels. And while the growth has been swift and competitive, very
often the end product leaves a lot to be desired--as many in the industry
admit.

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All the radio stations wanted him, and for good reason--Abdi
Jeylani Malaq was one of the most famous comedians in Mogadishu, and it was
the holy month of Ramadan when the radio broadcasters hold quiz shows. Abdi had
been in the business since 1989 and was in hot demand as a commentator for the
competitions. He had just finished one such quiz show Tuesday evening at Radio
Kulmiye, in the capital's central region, and had left the station for home when two
gunmen shot him
five times in the chest and head, local journalists told me. He was pronounced
dead from blood loss at Medani Hospital and was buried Thursday. "He was a great
friend for me and for all Somali journalists," recounted Abdalla Ahmed, a
reporter for the private Mogadishu station Radio Risaale.